“This is the industry’s first SMS for business phone systems,” Matt McGinnis, RingCentral’s director of product marketing, told VentureBeat. “Texting for work giving you more efficiency, flexibility, and empowerment. You can really leverage your business number to improve customer contact, colleague collaboration, etc.”

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RingCentral’s business SMS solution uses cloud-based technology and works across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. It will be included as part of RingCentral Office, and includes lots of flexibility. For example, on top of texting your customers, you can also text your employees.

“Being able to text individual departments is a key feature,” McGinnis said. “You could broadcast that there’s a meeting at 2 p.m. or give them thanks on a job well done.”

Business-class SMS will be available to new RingCentral customers at the end of December and existing customers will get access early in the first quarter of 2013.

San Mateo, Calif.-based RingCentral was founded in 1999 and has 11,000 employees worldwide. It now serves more than 300,000 business customers.